Sunny Goode

Of late on social media, our friends with offspring attending Washington & Lee and the Virginia Military Institute have been touting Lexington as one of the best small towns in Virginia. It’s been a while since we have roamed the streets of this historic hamlet and have longed for the opportunity to return to find out why all the fuss. With an irresistible invitation in hand, Alison and I recently headed west and must concur with its fans. Largely due to the sophisticated new boutique inn, The Georges, Lexington is indeed one of the charms of our Commonwealth.

The Georges

The Georges name comes from the two historic buildings that comprise the boutique inn: The Washington (as in President George) Building on the corner of Washington and Main streets

and the Marshall (as in General George) Building across the street on Main.

Public Spaces

From the moment we entered the lobby of the Marshall Building, we knew we were in for a design treat. Most all of the public and guest rooms feature a Sunny Goode painting that sets the tone for the decor. A sophisticated mix of modern and traditional furniture and accessories greets you at every turn. We ooooh-ed and ahhh-ed our way through our visit.

Co-owners Ann Parker Gottwald and husband Teddy Gottwald gutted and restored the two buildings dating from the turn of the eighteenth century in roughly a year, hiring general contractor John Adamson of Richmond to spearhead the impressive accomplishment. Along with Adamson and Goode, Ann Parker collaborated with James Farmer and a small cadre of family and friends to establish the welcoming and stylish interior design.

The Marshall Building is home to TAPS, the lobby lounge.

Alison and I enjoyed a post-dinner drink and cheese plate in front of the inviting fireplace. TAPS is a play on Teddy and Ann Parker’s initials and a nod to VMI and the military bugle call.

The dining space of TAPS hosts morning breakfast and special events, from meetings to rehearsal dinners.

Don’t you love the Sunny Goode triptych above that is the focal point of the space? The mirrored wall against the banquette above presented a structural design challenge.

The old stone walls bowed outwardly and the banquette and accessories had to accommodate (and disguise) the irregular bulge. This challenge was one of the many 18th-century construction era opportunities Adamson and the Gottwalds cleverly addressed.

the quatrefoil panels in TAPS create one of my favorite vignettes in the inn

Farmer recommended unifying the numerous public spaces in the two buildings with one wallpaper pattern,

and Ann Parker chose this textured Thibaut paper to do so.

The rear of the Marshall Building greets guests arriving by car. We lamented the timing of our visit was not a few weeks later in the spring as we would have loved to see the tuteur

and other plantings on the Garden Terrace in bloom. The terrace at the right of the entrance doubles as a relaxing gathering spot as well as special event space.

The guest rooms in the Marshall Building open to the terrace.

When tented, it transforms into an exquisite setting as shown in this photo of a rehearsal dinner from last summer.

The Washington Building is home to Haywood’s, a chic casual restaurant.

Ann Parker’s father, Haywood Hyman, enjoyed listening to jazz piano, so in tribute, she named the restaurant for him and included the instrument for ambiance. Music students from Washington and Lee often play the keyboard on Friday through Sunday nights.

W&L’s Audio Engineer has made Haywood’s a jazz music project for his students; what a benefit to Haywood’s patrons!

This original oil stick painting by Richmond artist Greig Leach and signed by many jazz greats, including Bruce Hornsby and Wynton Marsalis, greets diners.

Each guest room and bath is unique, featuring different furniture, paint and accessories.

Ann Parker achieved this considerable design feat herself, calling upon her collaborative design team’s talent and resources to help create the upscale, refreshing look and feel she wanted her guests to experience.

The aqua and neutral palette of this suite

makes for a tranquil place to relax and restore the soul.

one of four free-standing soaking tubs at the inn

Sunny’s painting pops in the neutral palette of this bedroom.

Alison and I admired the crisp blue and white wallpaper and soaking tub in this, our favorite bathroom.

The heated bathroom floors in all of the rooms provide comfort during a winter visit, while the bath fixtures by Waterworks ensure exquisite luxury.

Marshall Building

After the Washington Building tour, we walked across the street to visit the guest rooms of the Marshall Building, entering via the covered walkway overlooking the patio.

The first room was smaller, yet boasted one of the two balconies on the Marshall Building facing Main Street

with a bird’s eye view of The Washington Building and The Bistro, our lunch spot, from the balcony.

Once again, the unique decor of each room creates its own personality.

We had a fit over the chartreuse leather bed,

which looked upon this art-filled corner.

The L-shaped balcony gives this guest room impressive views of the city

and campus buildings.

The Town of Lexington

If you don’t have children attending W&L or VMI, you may not have a reason to visit Lexington. We say, you do now! Lexington offers plenty of shopping, walking and dining opportunities to satisfy its visitors.

Downtown

Lexington is a pedestrian-friendly town, with most attractions within a 10-minute walk of The Georges.

At Cahoots we spotted beautiful pottery that Alison declared I should buy because it matched my outfit. Every gal needs a shopping assistant like Alison!

Of course we stopped to capture the stylish containers

adorning the downtown store fronts.

Dueling Campuses

The campuses of W&L and VMI are a leisurely ten minute walk from The Georges. Each offers numerous interesting sites for the history buff and reside side-by-side just northwest of town center.

The body of General Robert E. Lee lies in repose in the Lee Chapel. Lee was president of W&L after the Civil War.

Lee Chapel

The unique imprinted patterns of the Lexington Bricks we spotted on campus were made to give traction to horses’ hooves while carrying riders and carriages throughout the town.

VMI’s castle-like Gothic Revival exterior inspires the cadet and visitor with a sense of history, service and valor.

The VMI Museum’s auditorium boasts a massive painting by alum B. West Clinedinst depicting the Battle of New Market, the basis for the 2015 movie Field of Lost Shoes.

At the time of the battle, the Confederate Army was in such dire need of manpower it drafted VMI cadets to supplement the Army’s ranks. The South claimed a key victory and defended the Shenandoah Valley with the help of these oh-so-young men.

Our visit ended with a scene of the VMI cadets on the parade ground with the oft-painted House Mountain in the background.

We left The Georges and Lexington refreshed by a very Virginia experience. We highly recommend you put them on your list for your next getaway with your loved one, family or posse pals. How about a family reunion or destination wedding? When you plan your visit to The Georges and Lexington, be sure to check out the Lexington Visitor’s Guide for events and happenings.

Many thanks to The Georges staff and Ann Parker for the lovely hospitality, and to our friends cHl, bJm and mDb for their helpful sightseeing suggestions.

April 12, 2017

Although we were guests of The Georges, the opinions expressed here are entirely our own.

All of a sudden back-to-school shopping ads are dominating the airwaves. While the last week of July may offer some savings for those who are on top of their game, Richmond’s has two shopping events this week that have me looking forward to the beginning of the dog days of summer. So as not to give away all of the delights in the stores, here’s just a sneak peak that should entice you to put both events on this week’s to-shop list.

Sunny Goode Pop-Up Art Show and Sale

One of our favorite local artists, Sunny Goode, whom we profiled as an Artist in Residence last summer, is partnering with that great little frame shop, Frame of Mind, for a pop-up art show this Wednesday evening, July 30th from 5:30-8 p.m.

The show provides a great opportunity to see up close and personal Sunny’s colorful oils in range of sizes while enjoying light refreshments.

Sunny will be available to discuss her work and commissions, and if you haven’t yet, you can also meet the talented owner of Frame of Mind, Inge Labuschagne. She has a knack for choosing just the right frame for any piece of art you take to her and also maintains a well-curated inventory of original pieces from local artists like Sunny. Located at 4818 Grove Avenue, Inge’s shop with its front patio makes a perfect spot to get your Wednesday night art fix, but if you can’t stop by then, any of Sunny’s show pieces not sold that night will remain at Frame of Mind through August.

Southern Season Richmond Grand Opening

Southern Season Richmond finally opens this Thursday, July 31st, and you know that The Gracious Posse is all aquiver. We have featured this Chapel Hill institution here and here, and even the exterior of the Richmond edition in the new Libbie Mill development has us salivating with anticipation. Like its other two sister stores, Southern Season Richmond will embrace its locale by featuring many Virginia food products amongst its beautiful wares.

This 52,00 square foot store includes, in addition to a myriad of specialty grocery and kitchen items, Southerly Restaurant and Patio and a 40-student cooking school and is destined to become a shopping mecca for food lovers of all types.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony begins at 8:40 a.m., and the store will open to the public immediately thereafter. Why not be one of the first to get your feet inside the new Southern Season store?

With Christmas now less than Five Months Away, I’ll be taking my Christmas list with me to both these hot shopping spots. Will I see you there?

With gratitude I salute three of our Artists in Residence today. All three cheerfully donated a work of art to Make the Magic, a fundraiser my daughter mBf spearheaded last weekend for Camp Kesem (UNC/Duke). The camp serves children who are affected by a parent’s cancer. Camp Kesem (Kesem means magic in Hebrew) was founded in 2000 by a Stanford student and has grown to 62 college campuses. Campers attend free of charge, so fundraising is critical. Seeing UNC and Duke students working in happy collaboration together alone was worth the price of admission!

for the silent auction, and I raised a cup o’ Big Boss that night to our artist friends. I was proud to tell my fellow bidders all about them and how appreciative I was of their participation. Their generosity will impact the lives of the Kesem campers and the college students learning the hard work of fundraising. Many thanks to Sunny, Becky and Meredith for helping to Make the Magic.

Maybe the demand for tickets was not quite like the frenzy for Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966, but Saturday night’s Black and White Ball to raise funds for juvenile diabetes research came close. With a sell-out crowd filling The Jefferson Hotel‘s Grand Ballroom to capacity, everyone embraced the spirit of the evening. Most all the patrons heeded the invitation’s directive,

Black and white formal attire

even for the ladies. More impressive still was the number of guests who donned masks in the spirit of the evening.

Fund a Cure chair, Slaughter Fitz-Hugh,

is joined by fellow

masked friends.

With the clothing color palette limited to black and white, the Silent Auction spread throughout the second floor balcony and Empire Room really shined. Greeting attendees, the Art Walk featured works by some of our favorite local artists, including

dancing on the ceiling, the Gala committee set a fitting stage for raising a lot of money.

Ever since 2008, black-tie fundraisers have become a bit passé as people aren’t as willing as pre-recession to part with their money in heated bidding wars for unique packages. That was not the feeling with Unmask a Cure. Starting with a vigorous game of Heads and Tails that I had first seen played at the Anything Goes Gala, most everyone stood up wearing a black or white necklace that they had purchased in order to participate. Thanks to electronic bidding devices, the Silent Auction continued through mid-dinner as patrons could keep up and raise their bids from their tables.

The Live Auction only contained 11 items, so the evening kept moving. One of the favorite packages was

Ryan Kerrigan of the Washington Redskins.

For $250, anyone could raise her paddle so she could have a picture taken post-auction with this hunky linebacker, who also agreed to sign the photo for the purchaser. What a great way to spread this generous opportunity among many guests who might not have otherwise participated in the Live Auction.

Following the Live Auction, Slaughter Fitz-Hugh shared his personal experience with Type 1 diabetes before the Fund a Cure bidding began. As local children suffering from this disease helped on stage, obliging patrons easily raised almost $300,000, which will all be used for research. For RVA, that is one impressive figure, and it is in addition to the proceeds from the Live and Silent Auctions and Heads and Tails.

Though I have attended my share of black-tie fundraisers, my first JDRF Gala really impressed. The patrons understood the importance of the event and rose to the occasion in celebratory (and theme-oriented) fashion. With many staying to dance the night away after the fundraising activities were finished, the success of the JDRF’s Black and White Ball almost makes Oscar night look blasé.

We like to think of The Gracious Posse as a two-way street. We find inspiration from you, and likewise we aspire to inspire our readers. Follow-up Fridays are a way to circle back to previous posts that resonated with you, and to ones where we learned more from you. We constantly find experts among us. And that’s what this site is all about: sharing inspired living with practical style.

mPh, a fellow Zinger, sent me a panoramic photo of her gallery wall. She feels fortunate to fill the expansive wall with her grandparents’ art. Her grandfather was in the foreign service and lived around the world, so she has an eclectic collection of wonderful pieces filled with fond memories to display.

Fellow chorister jDa has the most gracious garage ever chock-full of meaningful paintings. Her late mother, Joy Beam Daniel of RVA, was a recognized local artist, and jDa inherited much of her work. Every room in her home is filled with her mother’s art, and each has a theme: birds, flowers, sailboats, etc. She has created a lovely gallery wall of her mother’s art in her garage as a way to store the art. Now it’s easy for her to swap out art pieces in her home by “shopping” from the garage.

I love how Alison’s gallery is evolving, with works from local artists including Sunny Goode and Becky Jessee gracing her wall.

Thank you mPh and jDa for sharing your galleries with us. You’ve inspired me to step up my quest for gallery-worthy works for this space.

As I was creating a Gallery Walls board for The Gracious Posse, I discovered a preference for asymmetrical layouts of a variety of art styles. They seem so much more interesting than a grid of equal sized and related works.

Now that I know the style I want, it’s time to start shopping. I plan to include works from some of our favorite local artists whom we have featured here on The Gracious Posse. In order below,

Their new works will be complemented with some vintage pieces, and antiques malls are a great place to start searching for them. Here’s a look at some artwork that recently caught our eye at the West End Antiques Mall, where I have had great luck finding reasonably priced works with a bit of patina.

This last piece was painted by Dumitru Danielopol, the son of a Rumanian ambassador to the U.S., as well as a lawyer, who found time to develop an alluring style with oils. In the ’60s, his works were collected by the likes of President Lyndon Johnson and the Shah of Iran. I bought these two

unframed a couple of years ago from the West End Antiques dealer who has a connection to the French family that inherited Dumitru’s personal collection of his own work and will acquire a few at a time to sell at the antiques mall. I am always on the lookout for his most recent acquisitions.

With all my talk of gallery walls, I now have Ellen keen on creating her own. We are looking forward to shopping together for some new/old artwork. Did you see any that you have to have?

6 months agoby thegraciousposseCelebrate Flag Day today! Seeing the Stars and Stripes flying over Utah Beach in Normandy along side the French Flag fills me with a spirit of thankfulness for our great nation. #starsandstripes#utahbeach